Building block toys generally play music as blocks are built, thereby helping emotional cultivation of children or stimulation of their musical interest. Korean Patent No. 939,166 registered on Jan. 20, 2010 suggests a block toy that plays music or emits light according to a three-dimensional structure including unit blocks built on a game board. These unit blocks are supplied with power through a surface terminal from an external power source, and transmit and receive information to and from a game-board body through wireless communication. Here, musical elements, such as scale, octave, sound field, tone, dynamics, and the like, are defined depending on assembled or disassembled forms of blocks, and melodies are played by detecting these assembled or disassembled block forms.
However, in such block toys, each block includes a high-priced microprocessor or a wireless communicator, thereby increasing production costs. Further, as each block depends on an electric terminal on a surface, such limitation on instruments may result in an unstable electric connection, and contaminations on a surface and the like may cause connection failure with lapse of time, thereby leading to operation errors.
Korean Laid-open Patent Publication No. 2006-0064731 published on Jun. 14, 2006 discloses a toy for music education, in which music is played according to an electronic musical score by recognizing musical note blocks inserted into holes of an electronic board with a manuscript paper written thereon. Similarly, Japanese Laid-open Patent Publication No. 2001-312275 published on Nov. 9, 2001 discloses an automatic music playing apparatus, in which musical blocks may be played in sequence by connecting side by side musical blocks, each of which has a musical score and musical notes drawn on its surface, and includes male and female connectors on both sides, and by recognizing the connected musical blocks by a main body block with a treble clef drawn on its surface.
However, such music playing blocks, which are based on professional music scores, are not suitable for toddlers or young children.